flash fiction
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I woke in the dark. The cabin stank of stale cigarettes and beer. I pulled on all of my clothes, but couldn’t find my shoes. I walked barefoot up the steps, leaving Cubby’s hulk snoring in the dark. The moon was huge and the light falling on the deck was bright grey and harsh. The…
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At the bathhouse, I smile at a man in the changing area. I’ve come out of the sauna to get a cup of water. He’s sitting on a small white towel, on the bench next to the fan. We start to talk. He’s sixty-two. He tells me that he has found love recently. ‘It came…
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Roscoe tells me he thinks I’m getting better. I don’t know why he brings it up like that, from nowhere. It starts me thinking. I don’t feel much better. I haven’t been comfortable going out after dark for months. I count back. Three months? Four? ‘It’s all ended well,’ he says. ‘Has it?’ ‘It’s…
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We’d bunked off school that afternoon. Me and Pauline were lying in the tall grass. Henry was sitting away, with his back to us. For ages I looked, at his dark hair, deep black, almost purple, like a crow, and the whiteness of his neck, like ice-cold milk. His head was down, and he was…
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One time after school, I’d gone back to Yvonne’s place. We sat in the living room, watching television. Mrs Morelli brought us cups of tea and slices of fruit cake on a tray decorated with labels from Italian liquor bottles. After she’d put the tray onto the coffee table, she lit a cigarette with the…
Barry Lee Thompson 